Larry Baldock, Kiwi Party Leaders Speech

The
movie portraying the life of William Wilberforce is familiar
to many of us as it played an important role in the
formation of our party last year.

Before I continue
into my speech I would like us all to watch this small film
clip from the Movie by way of an introduction.

3 min film
clip amazing grace.

Helen Clark Sue Bradford Peter Dunne
John Key:

You will not drown out the voice of the people.

113 out of 121 MP's voting against the will of 74 -
84% of the people, would have been understandable in
Wilberforce's day but in the 21st century it is
reprehensible.

Our political leaders have shown the same
disdain for those they are supposed to serve as the member
from Liverpool when he said "the people' and referred to
them as the mob.

Prime Minister you were wrong when you
said there would not be enough support for us to get 300,000
signatures.

We have 340,000 and were not finished
yet.

Sue Bradford you were wrong when you said public
opinion had changed and that many were regretting signing
the petition.

The NZ research poll six weeks ago
confirmed that 74% are still opposed to criminalising all
parents. That is 1% higher than the result of the same poll
one year ago.

John Key you are wrong when you claim that
after your amendment was passed that the opposition to the
legislation subsided. We have collected more signatures
since your amendment than before it.

When the referendum
is held on the Question 'Should a smack as part of good
parental correction be a criminal offence in NZ?' and the
majority of Kiwis say 'No,' The Kiwi Party policy will be to
ensure that the referendum is respected and the law changed.

Let me make it clear, Chester Burrow's proposed amendment
does not meet this criteria. Only a complete repeal of the
Bradford Act or a re write to delete the prohibition on the
use of force for the purpose of correction will be
acceptable.

Recently as a nation, we paid our respects at
the passing of New Zealand's greatest Kiwi, Sir Edmund
Hilary. Again this week the Queen held a memorial service in
his honour.The Prime Minister said of him that he had
timeless values that would endure.

These values have
indeed endured, they have not only survived several
millennia, they have also led to the transformation of
societies across our western civilisations and these
principles have built the foundations of our free and
prosperous democracies.

While the PM can mouth these
words, she seems oblivious to the reality that her agenda
for NZ since the beginning of this millennia has in fact
been intent on undermining these 'timeless values', through
following a failed philosophy of humanism, secularism and
socialism that was already tried in last century and found
to be a complete failure.

When we launched this party we
made it clear it would be established upon the timeless and
enduring values that have made New Zealand great and a place
we have all been proud to call our home.

These principles
are on our website and in your folders this morning. One of
the very first of these principles is the principle of
democracy, and that principle has come under increasing
threat under the Helen Clark led government over the past
nine years.

There is a long list of legislation
passed without the majority support of Kiwi voters. The
abolition of the Privy Council, Prostitution Law Reform,
Civil Unions, Foreshore and Seabed, Repeal of section 59,
and the Electoral Finance Act to name some of them.

In
order to establish some more checks and balances against
this abuse of democracy in the future, the Kiwi Party would
make four changes to the current arrangements.

Firstly we
will change the threshold for a CIR referendum from 10% of
those on the electoral role as it is currently to 5% of
those who voted at the previous election. The current high
threshold of 10% is why so few petitions ever succeed, and
that is probably the way the National and Labour parties
like it to be.

In the state of California citizens can
achieve a binding, yes binding referendum with a petition of
only 5% of those who voted for the successful Governor at
the last elections. That works out at less than 300,000
signatures in a population of 36 million.

Secondly if
any citizen completes a referendum calling for the repeal of
legislation already passed by a deaf parliament as we have
done then those referenda must be binding also.

Thirdly we
would establish a referenda day mid term between elections
so the people of NZ can express their views on significant
or controversial issues twice during a 3 year term.

The
fourth change we would make would be to require all private
members bills that pass though parliament to be submitted to
a binding referendum before becoming law.

It has become
the government's strategy to introduce its secret social
engineering agenda through the use of member's bills,
instead of campaigning on their agenda presented openly in
their parties manifesto in an election.

Instead they use
member's bills and then whip their MP's into voting against
their conscience in order to secure the votes needed to pass
laws New Zealanders do not want and never voted for.

Over
the past year, my wife Barbara and I have collected
somewhere in the vicinity of 20,000 signatures for the
petitions we handed into parliament a month ago.

At tables all over the country we have heard good Kiwis
from all walks of life express their frustration and despair
at the majority of our elected members of parliament.

Many of the people we have met no longer hold much hope
that any politician can be counted on to tell the
truth.

If a politician speaks of honesty, faithfulness,
fidelity, servant hood and humility, they are viewed by
their parliamentary colleagues as a freak, a fundamentalist
or someone with a holier than thou attitude.

The team the
Kiwi Party is putting together to enter parliament after
this years election, (Team Kiwi), will not be just one lone
individual with a commitment to honesty, but a whole team.

A team committed to keeping each member accountable
to those standards we believe every Kiwi voter is entitled
to expect from their elected representatives.

It is
clear to us that New Zealanders have little confidence in
the current leadership and they despair of ever seeing
honesty principle centred leadership modelled in our
parliament.

According to Steven Covey, author of
'Principled Centred Leadership'. "The lesson of history is
that to the degree people and civilizations have operated in
harmony with correct principles, they have
prospered."

When these principles are taught to us in our
childhood and modelled by our parents we build a society
where we do not need a policeman on every corner because we
have one in our heads.

20 years ago the liberals removed
discipline from schools. Now 20 yrs later the Government has
to resort to assigning police officers to go into our
playgrounds.

'Better the policeman in the head than one
in every playground.'

As Dame Kiri Te Kanawa said recently
on Close Up, there is no respect anymore because authority
was taken from teachers, and now it is being taken from
parents as well.

We have a tough road ahead if we
are to avoid sliding further and further into a society of
violence, corruption, family dysfunction and family
breakdown.

When we launched the CIR we could have taken
the easy road and simply focused on opposing Sue Bradford's
bill. The bill she has now declared was never intended to
solve the problems of child abuse.

We were concerned then,
and remain concerned now, about our awful statistics on
child maltreatment deaths as it is technically called.

The
Crime Stats released by the Police this week revealed 12.3
per cent increase in violent crimes in 2007 - up by 6000
offences - almost all of them relating to family violence
and the figures also show a 31.5 per cent rise in recorded
domestic violence.

Is it just because there is more
reporting? A crime is a crime, whether it is reported or
not. Even if this increase in stats is entirely a result of
increased reporting we know that we have a serious
problem.

Statistics from CYFS own report in 2006
entitled 'children at increased risk of death from
maltreatment and strategies for prevention' showed that
children living in households with an adult unrelated to
them were almost 50 times as likely to die of an inflicted
injury compared with those living with two biological
parents.

In simple words it means that when families break
down, children inevitably become more vulnerable. They are
prone to being hurt either physically emotionally mentally
or spiritually.

That is why the second petition needs to
be completed so that as a nation we can focus on this
referenda question and ask our selves, are we going to just
continue along the same path doing the same things hearing
the same statistics and awful stories of abuse and do
nothing, or are we going to say, in a loud voice, with a
resounding 90% yes vote to the Question, "Should the
Government give urgent priority to understanding and
addressing the wider causes of family breakdown, family
violence and child abuse?"

We have 276,000 and we can
collect enough before the new deadline of May 14th to
complete the 285,000 required but will we have enough of a
buffer to survive the audit process?

We need your help to
achieve that.

If it is true that we can only be strong as
a nation when we have strong healthy families, then it
surely behoves us to look not just at child abuse, but to
understand and address the wider causes of family breakdown
and family violence as well.

The second referendum we have
taken all over the country is intended to call for a Royal
Commission with broad terms of reference to look at what has
gone wrong with family life in NZ over the last 30 years.

The recommendations flowing from that commission will help
set government policy back on track to build a better future
for all New Zealanders.

The success of the Kiwi Party in
the 2008 General Election will ensure that we choose the
commissioners to undertake this important work.

The third
policy area I want to address this morning is that of social
justice.

Many wrongly assume that any political party
identified with a base of Christian values is going to be on
the far right in its policies. In the case of the Kiwi Party
I want to assure you that nothing could be further from the
truth.

It is a ridiculous assumption given the evidence
from history that will show that most social reform to help
the poor has been led by Christians and inspired by
Christian values.

My wife Barbara and I have 15 years of
experience serving the poor and needy in the slums of Manila
and all over the Philippines.

Like John Key I grew up in
a state advances house with a solo mother who raised six
children, so I can assure you we will not be blaming all our
troubles on the DBP and single mums.

We must however,
tackle the tough question of how to support sole parents
while at the same time doing all we can to reduce the number
of single parent households.

Our support should not be
sending a message that there is no difference in outcomes
for children growing up in single parent families and those
led by a Mum and Dad committed to each other in a good
marriage.

Clearly research shows that there are.

One of
the greatest challenges facing us as a country is the number
of children growing up without a Dad, and I understand and
relate to that as much as anyone.

The principles this
party is committed to speak volumes about a concern for the
poor and needy, the orphans, widows and strangers and as
part of the next Government, we will ensure that National
does not return to their harsh policies of the 1990's that
left so many families in real hardship.

In this area I
want to outline two of the policies in closing that the Kiwi
Party believes can achieve the lifting of the living
standards of so many New Zealanders who are simply not
getting by on what they are earning.

The first policy is
intended to underscore and reinforce the point that we do
not believe it is the government alone that can solve the
problems of our society.

It is the third sector, Civil
Society made up of the charity sector, wonderful
organisations and charitable trusts societies and community
groups, as well as the well known organisations like the
Salvation Army and social services run by Catholic,
Methodist, Presbyterian Anglican Baptist Seventh Day
Adventist and Pentecostal denominations and small churches
all over this country.

These are providing services
on a daily basis and doing what they can to make life better
for those around us who are less fortunate and in need.
Without these organisations and their volunteers the
Government could never hope to meet the needs in our
society.

The PM has recently announced there will be a
large increase in funding to be delivered in this year's
budget to go to these organisations.

I think many New
Zealanders will be sceptical of the PM's generosity and
rightly so. It is election year and voters expect that money
will flow to buy votes. After all, why has it taken so long
for her to begin to meet these needs?

The problem is that
anything the government gives comes with strings attached
and a requirement for a box of paper work to be filed out.

And then on many occasions the government announces
funding for a new pilot program which begins, shows some
promising results and then finds that the support has been
withdrawn and put into another 'new' pilot program.

Under
Helen Clark's reign Government has been creating a society
dependent upon Wellington. It wants all its citizens to
become more and more reliant upon Nanny State from cradle to
grave.

But the Kiwi Party believes that it is
individuals, families and their communities that need to be
empowered to solve their problems, not the State.

When
Gordon Copeland, Bernie Ogilvy and I were part of the United
Future caucus we worked hard to introduce the policy to lift
the cap on the rebate for charitable donations.

We
rejoice now that this is to become a reality. It is in fact
the culmination of 20 years of work by Gordon since he was
appointed to the position of chairman of inter-church
working party on taxation when Roger Douglas was planning to
take away the tax free status of churches and end tax
rebates for donations back in the late 1980's.

We rejoice
that the cap on tax rebates for donations will be completely
removed and we hope this will encourage generosity on the
part of many new Zealanders and further boost the charitable
sectors ability to meet the needs around us.

But the Kiwi
Party recognises that there are still many New Zealanders
who do not earn enough to give much more than a few dollars
of their hard earned money away, even though they would like
to help others. After paying taxes, and then housing, food,
transport, education, and healthcare there is very little
left for discretionary giving.

Rather than have this
Government take the taxes and then give money to the
charities it likes, we believe every New Zealander should be
allowed to direct a small part of the taxes they pay to the
approved charity of their choice.

This policy would
release up to $290 million into the community organisations
and charities that are making a real difference in our
neighbourhoods and would be given with few strings
attached.

It would also be our hope that such an injection
of funding may help many volunteer organisations to wean
themselves off any dependence on the proceeds of pokies and
pub charity money which has become the norm for so many
since this scourge was released into our communities without
adequate controls by the Minister at the time, the Hon Peter
Dunne.

We should not be funding charity by robbing the
poor to help the poor. Robin Hood would turn over in his
grave if he knew.

This year is shaping up to be a big war
on who can promise the most in tax cuts.

We believe in tax
cuts and we will support tax cuts that make sense, but there
are a number of places we believe tax cuts should occur in a
way that will deliver more benefits for society as a whole
rather than just reducing income tax across the board.

We have released several of our tax policies in a
brochure available in your packs.

The Kiwi party wants to
focus on increasing the income levels of those at the lower
end of the income scale.

In regard to those truly
dependent on benefits I believe Major Campbell Roberts from
the Salvation Army made a very valid point when he said that
the Cost Price Index adjusted benefits do not allow for
those dependent upon our welfare system to keep up with the
much higher increases in the cost of living they face in the
core essential items such as food, gasoline, and
housing.

In respect of those working, we believe the
Government should use its tax surplus right now to lift the
minimum wage to $15 per hour for all adult workers and make
that fiscally neutral to payroll expenses by giving an equal
100% tax rebate to employers to cover the increased payroll
costs involved.

This rebate could be phased out
eventually as the economy adjusts over time.

Michael
Cullen and the Greens call on employers to lift wages and
somehow bear the cost of that within profit margins.

The
National Party talk about improving wages through tax cuts
but across the board tax cuts will not deliver sufficient
increases for our low paid workers.

The Kiwi Party
proposes a combination of both. Raising the minimum wage but
giving employers a tax credit to offset the cost so they can
remain competitive in our local and overseas markets.

Opponents of raising the minimum wage often say it will
cause many to loose their jobs since employers are forced to
lay off staff or cut back on hiring new staff due to
increased costs.Our policy will neutralise that argument
because it will be the Government not employers that will
bear the cost.

One thing is becoming abundantly clear to
every New Zealander.

We must offer better wages to stop
the loss of our labour force to Australia, and it is the
bottom end of the labour market that needs addressing the
most.

Lift the minimum wage and a rising tide will lift
all boats.The flow on affect to other wages can be
offset by further incremental reductions in Company taxes
over time.

Let me explain this again.

The Kiwi Party
will move the minimum wage from $12 to $15 and allow every
employer to claim the cost of that wage increase as a direct
tax credit.

This will benefit approx 140,000 Kiwi workers
because we believe in the principle that a worker is worthy
of their hire.

All of our tax policies can be implemented
over a 3 year period at the cost of around 6 billion and
with government forecasts of a surplus of around $8 billion
over the next three years these tax policies are
affordable.

The story of William Wilberforce has come at
this time in the form of the movie 'Amazing Grace' to remind
us of several important lessons from history.

It is an
inspiring story about perseverance. It encourages us that
the people's voice can be heard, and things can
change.Wilberforce fought on the basis of what should
be, not what was. Upholding Justice is the very core
rationale for Government to exist and exercise its huge
power to maintain a just society for all.It is this
commitment to justice that the Kiwi Party wants to see
restored.

In the movie Wilberforce announced the universal
truth, "Remember, God has made all men equal". This is one
of the very foundations of a just society and something we
need to be reminded of regularly.

Next Friday Gordon
Bernie and I will be at the launch of the Kiwi Immigration
Watch to give the full support of the Kiwi Party to this
important initiative.

The Kiwi Immigration watch will be
committed to giving a voice to so many of those seeking to
find a new home in NZ who are not being treated with the
justice they deserve.

If we have invited people
here to work and pay taxes as part of our society we must
treat them with the dignity and respect they are entitled to
as part of that great truth Wilberforce
extolled.

Immigration NZ is not providing the service they
should be with unacceptable delays in processing, stories of
lost passports, reports of corruption in some of our
Embassies abroad and endless requests for information and
extra fees that make no sense at all.

All these failures
of service result in enormous frustration, financial
hardship, and families being separated for unacceptable
lengths of time and the Kiwi Party intend to do something
about it.

Through the gathering of 600,000 signatures to
force a referendum, I have shown that ordinary Kiwis can
make a difference when we work together.

Some have said we
cannot be a single issue party. I say you have to start
somewhere, and this issue is worth fighting for.

Our
critics say people won't vote on a single issue like
smacking.

The same Herald Digipoll that gave the Kiwi
Party its first mention at 0.4% after only 6 weeks of being
registered revealed that 6.2% would vote this year based on
the anti smacking issue.

Last month it was 4.2% so the
average is the 5% we need to succeed.

We will happily
accept their support then give them and many other Kiwis
more than just one reason to vote for us.

With our
commitment to democracy and policies to give every Kiwi a
stronger voice in government decisions,

With a strong
commitment to the welfare, health and strength of Kiwi
Families,

With a commitment to timeless values, with
integrity, honesty and transparency,

And our commitment to
standing up for those in genuine need and policies to lift
the earning capacity of those whose daily hard work keeps
our nation functioning,

And with policies we will be
releasing shortly policies to address the injustices being
pursued by Department of Conservation and Ministry of
Fisheries that are undermining the rights of every Kiwi to
fish and hunt non-commercially to put food on their family's
tables.

We can confidently say that the Kiwi Party has
much to offer voters in this year's election.

I ask you
to join with us in turning our nation back to the principles
and values it was founded upon.

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